Ronnie L. Gilbert

Ruth Alice "Ronnie" Gilbert was born on September 7, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents. Her mother, Sarah, emigrated from Warsaw, Poland, and worked as a dressmaker and trade unionist with ties to the Polish-Jewish Bund. Her father, Charles Gilbert, came from Ukraine and labored in a factory. Gilbert attended Anacostia High School, where she nearly faced expulsion after refusing to participate in a blackface minstrel show, citing Paul Robeson's denunciations of racism. During World War II, at age 16, she relocated to Washington, D.C., took a government job, and joined a protest folk-singing group called the Priority Ramblers. Upon returning to New York, she became involved in organizing the Office Workers' Union and worked for the Textile Workers' Union, during which time she encountered Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers.

Gilbert went on to become one of the founding members of the Weavers, a folk quartet that also included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman. As the group's contralto, her voice appears prominently on recordings such as "This Land Is Your Land," "If I Had a Hammer," "On Top of Old Smoky," "Goodnight, Irene," "Kisses Sweeter than Wine," and "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena." The Weavers became an influential force in American folk music before being blacklisted in the early 1950s due to the group's left-wing sympathies amid widespread anti-communist sentiment. Following the group's dissolution in 1953, Gilbert continued her activism independently, traveling to Cuba in 1961 on a trip that concluded on the same day the United States banned travel to that country. She also traveled to France, where she worked with British theatrical director Peter Brook and participated in the Parisian protests of 1968.

That same year, Gilbert made her Broadway debut in the original production of Robert Shaw's play The Man in the Glass Booth, taking on the dramatic, non-musical role of Mrs. Rosen, a concentration camp survivor. The production opened in 1968 and marked a significant turn toward stage acting in her career.

Gilbert relocated to Berkeley in 1971 and began studying therapy. She entered graduate school the following year and by 1974 had earned a master's degree in clinical psychology, subsequently working as a therapist and engaging with Gestalt, Freudian, and Jungian practices. Also in 1974, folk singer Holly Near dedicated her album A Live Album to Gilbert without having sought her permission, uncertain whether Gilbert was still active. Gilbert learned of the dedication from her daughter and soon met Near, a meeting that eventually led to a sustained musical partnership. The two toured nationally in 1983 and released their first live album together, Lifeline.

In 1984, Gilbert joined Near, Arlo Guthrie, and Pete Seeger for the quartet album HARP, an acronym drawn from the first names of its four members. During the tour supporting that album, Gilbert met Donna Korones, who would become her partner and later her wife. She came out as a lesbian shortly after beginning her relationship with Korones. In 1985, Gilbert performed with Near, Guthrie, and Seeger at the Ohio State Fair, and also appeared at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, the first Redwood Festival, the Vancouver Folk Festival, the National Women's Music Festival, and Sisterfire. She and Near recorded the album Singing With You in 1986.

During this period, Gilbert also wrote and performed in a one-woman show centered on Irish-American labor organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, composing most of the show's songs herself. A second solo work drew on author Studs Terkel's book Coming of Age. In 1991, she recorded "Lincoln and Liberty" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" for the compilation Songs of the Civil War, and in 1992 she contributed the song "Music in My Mother's House" alongside the Vancouver Men's Chorus on their album Signature.

In 2006, the Weavers received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; Gilbert and Fred Hellerman accepted the honor on the group's behalf, as Pete Seeger was unable to attend and Lee Hays had died in 1981. That same year, Gilbert moved to Caspar, California. She continued touring and appearing in plays and music festivals into her eighties, and remained engaged in political activism, including participation in Women in Black to protest Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and United States policies in the Middle East.

In her personal life, Gilbert was married to Martin Weg from 1950 to 1959; the couple had one daughter, Lisa, born in 1952. In 2004, when same-sex marriage was temporarily legalized in San Francisco, Gilbert married Donna Korones, her partner of nearly two decades. Gilbert died on June 6, 2015, at a nursing facility in Mill Valley, California, from natural causes, at the age of 88.